The Robustness of the Nine-Factor Structure of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire across Four Arabic-Speaking Middle Eastern Countries

Abstract

The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) focuses on the "pure" cognitive components of emotion regulation thought to help people to manage and control their emotions during or after the experience of a stressful event. The aim of this study was to explore the psychometric properties of an Arabic version of the CERQ (CERQ-Ar) across four Arabicspeaking countries in the Middle East (i.e., Egypt, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar; N = 1,470). The original nine-factor CERQ model was confirmed, and these factors had moderateto-high internal reliabilities, modest-to-strong interrelations, and meaningful associations with positive and negative affect. Results were robust across the four Arabic countries, suggesting that the same cognitive emotion regulation strategies appear to be present across different cultures, but the relative preference to use one or more strategies may quantitatively vary across cultures.

The role of emotion regulation as a mediator between early life stress and posttraumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety in Syrian refugees

“…In the present study, the nine subscales were categorized into maladaptive (CERQ- M) and adaptive (CERQ-A) strategies, and scores for both were summed from the relevant subscales. The Arabic version of the CERQ shows solid convergent validity and moderate to high reliabilities for each subscale 68 .…”

Psychometric Properties of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) in Patients with Fibromyalgia Syndrome

“…The first-order nine-factor model fit the data well (CFI = 0.91, NNFI = 0.9, RMSEA = 0.05). More recently, Megreya et al ( 2016 ) analyzed the psychometric properties of the Arabic version of the CERQ in four Arabic-speaking Middle Eastern countries (Egypt, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar). In line with our study, due to the ordinal nature of the items, the WLSMV estimator was used in the CFA.…”

“…Moreover, assessment of the habitual use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies relies on recall, which may be particularly problematic for strategies whose use is highly contextually dependent, such as Acceptance or Positive reappraisal. In addition, due to the predominance of women among participants, we were not able to examine gender differences in the use of CERQ strategies, as has been done in many previous studies carried out in Western, Middle Eastern, and Eastern countries (Martin and Dahlen, 2005 ; Megreya et al, 2016 ). We did not implement statistical techniques to mitigate potential “method biases” (Podsakoff et al, 2012 ) in our data because we judged that our participants were able to provide accurate answers.…”

“…The CERQ has been translated and validated into many languages and cultures, such as French (Jermann et al, 2006 ), Chinese (Zhu et al, 2008 ), Turkish (Tuna and Bozo, 2012 ), Persian (Abdi et al, 2012 ), Spanish (Domínguez-Sánchez et al, 2013 ; Medrano et al, 2013 ; Domínguez-Lara and Medrano, 2016 ) and Arabic (Megreya et al, 2016 ), showing adequate reliability and validity. A recent cross-cultural study (Potthoff et al, 2016 ) compared CERQ scores across six European countries (Netherlands, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Germany) using general population samples, all comparable in terms of age and educational backgrounds.…”

The Behavioral Emotion Regulation Questionnaire: Development, psychometric properties and relationships with emotional problems and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire

“…The CERQ has been translated and validated in numerous languages. Cross-cultural comparison between European countries (Potthoff et al, 20L6) and Arabic-speaking countries (Megreya et al, 2016) showed that there were strong relationships between cognitive coping strategies and psychopathology in all countries.…”